The Look Magazine Photograph Collection is a vast photographic archive created to illustrate Look magazine and related publications produced by companies founded by Gardner Cowles. The cataloged portion of the collection totals some four million published and unpublished images made by photographers working for Look, most dating 1952-1971. With its coverage of U.S. and international lifestyles, celebrities, and events, the collection offers insight into the magazine's photojournalistic documentation of aspects of society and culture--particularly American society and culture--in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Cowles Communications donated the bulk of the archive to the Library of Congress in 1971, after Look magazine ceased publication.